


you fell in love with the sunshine, and you took a walk with a boy (you spent half a year on the verge of tears just because nothing ever feels like it did before)

by jublis



Series: blackbox [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi Keiji-centric, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Complicated Relationships with Parents, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Hopeful Ending, Love, M/M, Pre-Canon, akaashi is a huge nerd who loves poetry, akaashi makes me go insane, and bokuto is the human version of an exclamation point, assume every character i write is jewish, it even borders on happy! oh my god!, kenma is there for one second and i adore them, prove me wrong!! prove me wrong, the last three are only mentioned, they dont even smooch in this one but sometimes u dont have to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26860897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jublis/pseuds/jublis
Summary: Time works on some people like sandpaper, and though Akaashi doesn’t grow smaller, his words do. He never wastes any, never makes a sound not worth making. You always become what other people say you are, and Akaashi has always been told that he’ssuch a quiet kid.And what the hell is he supposed to do with that?To him, words come as easy as breathing. Too bad saying them makes them more than that. It makes them so much more than that.(To be brave enough to exist in a sentence spoken out loud. What does it take?Not much. Just everything. Just absolutely everything.)Or, Akaashi Keiji has the habit of thinking a million words and then only saying half of what he means. It gets worse.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji & Bokuto Koutarou, Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: blackbox [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988422
Comments: 36
Kudos: 157





	you fell in love with the sunshine, and you took a walk with a boy (you spent half a year on the verge of tears just because nothing ever feels like it did before)

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey hey!! sooo i really hope you guys like this. it's my first fic in the hq fandom, and it stems from the fact that i FINALLY got around to reading the manga, and the quote "we are the protagonists of the world" has now made akaashi and bokuto the protagonists of my mind.
> 
> title is from "blackbox," by nana grizol. (which is definitely a bokuaka song. pls)
> 
> see y'all at the end notes!

**i.**

For the better part of Akaashi’s childhood, instead of bedtime stories, his mother would read him excerpts from her favorite plays. 

(She didn’t plan on having children. That much is obvious. But she still ends up a mother, so it’s up to her to pull everything together in the best way she knows how. And Akaashi still ends up a son, so he lies between the blankets, quiet and still, with his eyes blown wide, and listens.)

Sometimes Akaashi speaks, and then wishes he didn’t. It always spooks her, when he does; whether she had already thought him to be asleep, or had gotten lost somewhere between her eyes and the pages, or maybe it just scares her that he’s grown enough to form full sentences, he doesn’t know. But he tries—he  _ wants  _ to talk to her, wants her to smile at him and card her fingers through his hair the way she does when she thinks he’s sleeping. They don’t see each other much during the daytime, because Akaashi stays in kindergarten most of the time, and then he goes to Kizumi-san’s house while his mother is still at work, and she picks him up for dinner. And mother isn’t very good with words, despite how much she reads them. In that way, Akaashi thinks, she’s very much like a little kid. She still looks at books for guidance, the same way he looks at teachers when he needs help.

She’s reading one of her favorite passages, from a play Akaashi doesn’t know the name of.  _ A great net of souls, and the souls are three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Nothing’s lost forever. _

Akaashi says, voice very quiet against the dark room, “Mom, what are atoms ?”

Mom doesn’t exactly jump a feet into the air, but it’s a close thing. She looks at him but doesn’t quite look at him, as far as he can see, and her fingers fiddle with the cover of her book. “I thought you were already asleep,” she whispers, worrying at her lip.

Akaashi shakes his head. “No, I wanna know what atoms are.”

She half-smiles, just a twitch of the lips. “Well, you see,” she says, hesitantly, “they’re the things that make up — the whole world, basically. You’re made of a bunch of atoms, and I’m made of a bunch of atoms. And so’s your bed, and this house…”

“And Kizumi’s dog?” Akaashi asks, because he wants to be sure, and Mom chuckles, nodding. He mulls it over for a few moments, squinting his eyes at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, and then says, “So, are they like words?”

At that, Mom frowns. “What do you mean, are they like words?”

Akaashi props himself up on the bed by his elbows, staring intently at the shadow that is his mother, back-lit by the light coming through the crack on the door. “You said everything’s made of them,” he explains, “but everything is also made of words. Like the things you read to me, and everytime we meet someone new we say  _ hi, nice to meet you _ , and when we see someone we like we tell them about our day and we use words to do it. And everything that happened that isn’t happening anymore is still here but only because we can say things about them. Because nothing is lost forever. So are atoms like words?”

Mom is very, very quiet. Then she reaches out a hand, and Akaashi almost tumbles out of the bed with how fast he tries to take it, putting his own small palm against her bigger one. “You’re a very smart kid, aren’t you,” she says, but it doesn’t sound like a question. Her hand is very soft and very cold, and it squeezes Akaashi’s, still warm from being under the blanket. “I’m doing something right, huh?”

It’s Akaashi’s turn to frown. “What do you mean?”

She squeezes his hand once more, and then lets it go, bringing it back up to cradle her book. “Nothing,” she says, a little distracted. “Nothing, nothing. Nothing for you to worry about.”

She says it a lot. She says it, then she pets his hair awkwardly and gives an excuse and leaves, and he doesn’t see her until the morning when she wishes him a good day before going to work.

He walks to school by himself, just a few blocks away, and he always worries.

The thing about Akaashi is that he loves words. He knows them as one knows an old friend, just on the tip of his tongue, drumming between his lips, waiting to be let out. His mother raised him with words not her own, and somewhere in between, his love for her became intertwined with his love for it. He loves how the word  _ presumptuous  _ makes his mouth feel very full, and how  _ inherently  _ is like letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and how  _ fluttering  _ makes the same sound that a butterfly’s wings do, when it’s really quiet and you’re listening for it.

He loves his mother the same way he loves sentences, which is to say — he’s never really learned how to say either out loud.

Akaashi’s best friend is called Kizumi. They’re friends because their mothers are friends, although Akaashi has never seen them talk to each other about anything other than them, so it makes him think that maybe, when you become an adult, friend just means something different than what it did when you’re a kid. It’s the kind of thing that makes Akaashi not want to grow up. 

Kizumi isn’t as calm as Akaashi is, but he likes to tell and act out his own stories, so Akaashi is pretty content in just sitting and watching. He’s a slip of a boy with very dark hair, all sharp angles and freckled face, and sometimes when he’s excited his voice gets so shrill it sounds almost like a bird chirping. He also looks like a bird, because his nose is very pointy, but the one time Akaashi told him that, Kizumi cried, so Akaashi didn’t say it anymore. 

“And so!” Kizumi exclaims, widening his arms in a dramatic gesture and nearly falling to the grass in his haste, “Captain Flint hid his treasure somewhere he knew no one would ever find it. In a distant planet, in a galaxy far, far, away across the stars and moon and comets! Some people say that it’s still out there, and the only way to ever get there is to follow the map Flint left behind, and there it’ll be — the loot of a  _ thousand  _ worlds!”

“If Captain Flint didn’t want anyone to find his treasure, why did he leave a map?” Akaashi asks, not unkindly. It’s a bright day in mid-July, and school’s out, so he and Kizumi are sitting in the backyard of Kizumi’s house, Kizumi wearing his special storytelling hat (a wizard hat spotted with unrealistic stars), and Akaashi wearing what he always does, which is just a t-shirt and shorts. 

Kizumi flops to the ground in front of him, taking off his hat, which means the story is over. “I dunno,” he says. “Maybe he also needed to remember where he left the treasure, since it was such a big secret.”

“Maybe he wanted other people to remember that he did it,” Akaashi says, quietly. 

Kizumi immediately brightens, nodding at Akaashi. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it! That’s so smart. That makes sense. How are you so smart, Akaashi-san?”

Akaashi shrugs. “I’m not  _ that  _ smart,” he mumbles. His fingers twist around the strands of grass between his legs, almost pulling enough to snap the steam clean off, but never doing so. 

“Yeah, you are,” Kizumi insists, leaning forward so his eyes would meet Akaashi’s. “Mom always says so. Because you do well in school and you know a lot of big words and you know  _ everything _ .”

“I don’t know everything,” Akaashi answers, almost petulantly, though a small smile is playing at his lips. “I have questions too. About a lot of things. It’s just that they don’t make a lot of sense, so I don’t say them.”

“Well, you can say them to me!” Kizumi says, jabbing a thumb in his own direction. “I don’t know if I can  _ answer _ , but I can listen. You always listen to my stories.”

“My questions aren’t as good as your stories, Kizumi-san,” Akaashi says.

“Well, I don’t  _ know  _ that,” Kizumi says. “Come on.”

Akaashi frowns at the ground. He opens his mouth, closes it again; he feels the words at the tip of his tongue, but before he can say any of them, they slip away, like water between his fingers. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to just say something. He wants it so bad he almost chokes on it, but whenever he speaks he just feels clumsy but with his teeth, which is worse. Because when you’re clumsy with your body you just fall and scrape your knees and then you get back up, but you can never take back something you say. Akaashi doesn’t want to speak because he’s afraid he’ll waste the words. He’s afraid he won’t use them right.

But Kizumi is waiting, eyes wide and expectant, so Akaashi utters, so quiet it’s almost a whisper, “Do you think your mother likes you, Kizumi-san ?”

Kizumi blinks at him. “Of course she does,” he says, like he’s never even considered another possibility. “Of  _ course  _ she does! Why are you asking that, Akaashi-san?”

Akaashi tightens his shoulders, twisting the stem of grass between his fingers again. “I was asking you,” he says, slowly, “because I don’t think my mother likes me very much.”

He doesn’t understand why Kizumi looks so sad, but his friend’s eyes are wide and just a little bit glassy. “She’s your  _ mom _ ,” he echoes, voice small. “Of course she loves you. Why do you think she doesn’t, Akaashi-san?”

“I never said she didn’t — _ love  _ me,” Akaashi hurries to explain, tripping a bit on the difficult word. “I’m sure she does, because she’s my mom and she has to. I just don’t think she likes me. Because we don’t talk a lot and she reads to me at night but doesn’t tell me how her day’s been and doesn’t ask me how my day’s been. And if you like someone you ask them how they are. Don’t you? You ask them if they’re happy and you’re sad if they say they’re not.”

He isn’t used to saying so much in one go, and he licks his chapped lips. He still feels clumsy, still feels out of place, but something in his stomach has uncurled a little. And Kizumi has his head tilted like he’s considering, like he understands, and Akaashi wonders if this is what it feels like to talk about things outside of your own head.

After a few moment’s pause, Kizumi says, “Oh. I guess that makes sense. But that’s just stupid, then.” He turns glistening eyes at Akaashi, mouth set in a frown. “Because I don’t know how anyone could not like you a lot, Akaashi-chan.”

Akaashi doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t. Kizumi scoots over to sit shoulder to shoulder with him, and lays his head on his shoulder, content to just be in silence, for once. Akaashi is never able to tell him just how much he appreciated that, but there’s one thing he knows for sure. When it comes to family, love is very, very complicated. With other people, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Kizumi moves away when they’re both nine years old, and Akaashi never really sees him again. But for years, the passcode on his phone is the date of Kizumi’s birthday, for no better reason than because Akaashi knows he will never forget it. 

Without Kizumi, things are fine. But time works on some people like sandpaper, and though Akaashi doesn’t grow smaller, his words do. He never wastes any, never makes a sound not worth making. You always become what other people say you are, and Akaashi has always been told that he’s  _ such a quiet kid. _

And what the hell is he supposed to do with that?

To him, words come as easy as breathing. Too bad saying them makes them more than that. It makes them so much more than that.

(To be brave enough to exist in a sentence spoken out loud. What does it take?

Not much. Just everything. Just absolutely everything.)

**ii.**

Akaashi is the kind of person who has contingency plans for contingency plans, but he really didn’t plan on volleyball.

It starts like this: by middle school, he’s already pretty sure what he’s going to do with his life. He likes reading, and he likes words, so whatever he does in college will have to do with either of those things. He doesn’t talk much during class and does well in his subjects, and is smart enough to help out people that come to him. Not that that’s a common occurence — it’s happened once or twice, and the other students usually stay very silent, nod when he’s done, and scurry away. Akaashi doesn’t consider himself to be very threatening, but the whole  _ know thyself  _ thing hasn’t really applied to him much at all.

And he plays volleyball. Because his mother once off-handedly mentioned that playing a sport would be good for him — for his health, and maybe he’d be able to make some friends, if he wants. She often phrases a lot of her sentences as questions and a lot of her questions as sentences, so Akaashi only nods when she tells him that, and by the next week, he’s a member of Mori Junior High School’s volleyball team, second starting setter. 

He could have chosen another sport, really. Mori isn’t really a volleyball school, nor is it known for being anything other than okay at any other thing, and Akaashi’s teammates aren’t really anything special. But he picks volleyball because he didn’t know a lot about it beforehand, and he keeps playing because he’s  _ good _ .

The coach — a woman with a very round face and light hair always tied into a bun, energetic and stern  — had looked surprised when Akaashi mentioned that he’d never played in a team before, because it took him less than a week to grasp the basic concept of setting, and a little bit over that to get decent at receiving, and pulling a decent spike or two. Fuyumi-sensei is not a woman that wastes compliments, and it makes Akaashi feel weird, to be openly appraised like this, but he finds that he doesn’t mind that all that much.

(When he comes back from his first training session, his mom is in the kitchen, making soba for dinner. She asks him how it went, not quite meeting his eye, but it’s so much more than enough that his face almost cracks in two as he smiles.

He stays in the team until he graduates junior high.)

And volleyball is  _ fun _ . So much action doesn’t leave any space to say things that aren’t strictly necessary — _ Nice receive _ and  _ nice kill _ and _ chance ball _ and  _ one touch _ become words embedded into his brain, staining his arms along with the bruises of a ball well hit. In a sport, it’s not about the things you say; it’s about things you do. And Akaashi can be so much more through what he can do with his hands and legs and body than anything he could ever be out loud. 

He plays some good games, and some great ones. He loses, and then he wins more than he loses; sometimes he messes up his sets and it hurts like a wound, but the first time he successfully pulls out a feint during a match he feels his face crack and spill a smile, laugh bubbling from his mouth. His calves and arms get sore, and he grows taller, and he thinks faster. He still won’t speak much, and it earns him a reputation in the team, but one word from Fuyumi-sensei that _ That boy thinks more during a match than most of you have your entire lives, asswipes, _ shuts them right up. 

And, just as Akaashi did not plan volleyball, he did not plan Fukuroudani. 

He has two picks for high school; two schools with strong teams that offered him scholarships, based both on his academics and his “sports career,” which apparently is something that he now has. And since Akaashi didn’t plan this, he doesn’t know what to choose. Between Furukoudani and Suzumeoka, he’s nearly considering just writing the names down on pieces of paper and drawing them out, like a contest, when his mother asks if he would like to go see a game.

“Because if you’re going on a sports scholarship, and you’ll keep playing,” she explains over dinner, scratching her neck, “it would be good to know what — what your teammates play like, right?”

By then is already March before he goes to high school, and his mother asks around both of the schools he’s been approached by about upcoming games. Fukuroudani is playing a practice match against a team from another province in the next couple weeks, so Akaashi goes. Mom doesn’t know anything about volleyball, but she still goes, and for some reason it makes him feel warm all the way down to his fingertips.

The game happens. Fukuroudani wins. And Akaashi makes his choice.

Because he expected many things, but he didn’t expect Bokuto Koutarou. 

It’s not like magic. Akaashi doesn’t hear thunder in the distance, and there isn’t a foreboding roll of drums, and there is no crack of lightning. But Bokuto — a first year, like Akaashi will be, the 12 on the back of his uniform proudly on display — walks into the court, and he takes it by  _ storm _ . 

“Mom,” Akaashi whispers to her somewhere during the second set, when Fukuroudani is nearing their match-point. “We don’t need to see Suzumeoka’s game.”

And his mother might not know him very well, but she knows he never says a word he doesn’t mean. 

He can still hear Bokuto’s voice in his ear, on the car back home. He can still see the black-and-white hair, spiked like a cartoon character who’d just taken a scare, and the bright, boisterous laugh that bounced around and across the court.  _ Hey, hey, hey! That was fun! _

Hey, hey, hey.

. . . 

Bokuto’s presence is as overwhelming from up close as it was from a distance, if not more. Akaashi stands with his back straight in the Fukuroudani gym, head turned to the coach, and says,  _ I am Akaashi Keiji, from Mori Middle School. I played setter. Pleased to make your acquaintance _ , and Bokuto’s face is like the sun.

So when he asks, “Could you please help me practice spikes for just a little bit?”, Akaashi tries his best not to squint against the light, and nods.

It’s just practice, and they don’t say much except for Bokuto’s near constant calls of  _ one more _ !, and Akaashi’s measured of questions of  _ was that good enough? Was it too short? _

The thing is: they don’t say much, but Bokuto makes Akaashi want to. 

It scares him so much he’s sure his face flickers from its usual calm stare for a moment, and he can only thank all gods that Bokuto’s back was turned to him when he did so. 

Akaashi isn’t sure what to think of him, so far. He thinks Bokuto is a talented player, sure, and he thinks he’s interesting, and a little too loud for his or anyone’s good, but that’s just superficial. Akaashi thinks of himself as someone who’s actually pretty good at reading people, and though he doesn’t like to make assumptions, it would be easy to write Bokuto as another overly excited jock, who’s way too confident in his own ability and prowess, but doesn’t have an ounce of self-reflection or thinks any further than what is happening right now.

Within two hours of knowing Bokuto, Akaashi learns this: he might be predictable, but when it matters the most, he’s never what you expect.

They’re cleaning up the gym together, even though Akaashi’s the one who’s a first year, and he should be doing it, but Bokuto doesn’t make a move to leave, so he doesn’t waste his breath in trying to be polite. He cleans up the floor while the other picks up the stray balls they used for spiking, and the only sound is the squeaking of their shoes against the polished wooden floor. Akaashi has never been so keenly aware of silence like he is now, but even if he had enough guts to start talking to Bokuto unprompted, he doesn’t even know what he would say.

“Hey,” Bokuto says, loudly, from all the way across the court. “What is it you wanna say, Akaashi-kun? You can tell me!”

Akaashi startles so badly he nearly drops the broom, but he manages to keep it up and not trip. He whips his head to Bokuto, heartbeat just slightly off, and tilts his head in confusion. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, not understanding.

Bokuto makes a wide gesture with his free hand, his other arm cradling three volleyballs against his chest. “No, no, I know that. But you looked like you were  _ about  _ to, but you were embarrassed or something,” his eyes widen a little, and he looks more like an owl than usual, which is saying a lot. “Wait, is it because I’m a second year? I remember how scared I was of the upperclassmen when I was a first year, so I totally get if you’re put off by that, but you don’t have to be!”

Akaashi blinks. “Thanks,” he says, because that’s what he means. Bokuto wilts a little at the monosyllabic response, but then he tilts his head, and seriously, he really looks like an owl.

“Why do you do that?” Bokuto asks.

Akaashi only looks blankly at him. This face is practiced — he’s actually really, really glad that Bokuto is far enough away that he can’t see the way Akaashi’s knuckles are white from gripping the handle of the broom. As much as he’d wanted to talk to Bokuto before, and hear him talk, now he just wants this conversation to be over as soon as possible. This is dangerous territory.

When Akaashi doesn’t say anything, Bokuto continues, “You look like you chew the words before you spit them out. And you chew a lot before saying even one, and sometimes you don’t even say anything at all.” He gestures vaguely at his own mouth, and then shrugs awkwardly, which is not something Akaashi imagined Bokuto was capable of doing. But it’s gone before it lingers, and Bokuto’s face brightens again, lips twisting into a teasing smile. “Don’t you think you’ll wind up getting a stomach ache, swallowing all those sentences?”

Akaashi knows Bokuto is joking. He really, really does.

He can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.

**iii.**

Having a best friend is both exactly and nothing how Akaashi remembered it.

Most of that  _ exactly  _ stems from the fact that a lot of the time, Bokuto can be pretty childish. Not to say he’s immature — which he definitely is, but that’s not the point — , but he’s just so  _ excited  _ about  _ everything _ . He texts random pictures of cats and owls (of course) to Akaashi be it the middle of the school day or the middle of the night, and talks animatedly with his hands, and has gotten them both kicked out of multiple stores in multiple ways, and whenever they go out to eat, he always ends up buying an ice cream that stacks precariously high, and staring at it in childlike wonder. 

The  _ nothing  _ is because Bokuto isn’t like anyone else at all.

That doesn’t stop him from being annoyingly predictable. By the time Akaashi is in his second year, he has played somewhere north of forty-three games as Fukuroudani’s starting setter, practice matches included, and he’s pretty sure he might know Bokuto better than anyone else in the team. He has a bullet point list of his weaknesses — which sounds terrifying when put like that, but really, Akaashi has to keep up somehow. He’s at thirty-seven and counting — and is able to come up with on-the-spot solutions for whenever Bokuto needs to be put in his place.

(His place, that is — as their captain, and as their ace. Because in his third year, Bokuto is ranked in the top five best aces in the country, and the way he flaunts it would be infuriating, if Akaashi didn’t know well enough to be able to tell that he’s genuinely elated about it.)

So when Akaashi walks into the gym one day and sees Bokuto curled up into a ball under the coach’s desk, hiding his face between his knees, he gives himself a few moments of silence to prepare before announcing his presence.

He kneels in front of Bokuto, peering under the table so he can try and catch his eye, but it’s no use when he’s like this. So the next best tactic is to tap him on the knee in a silent  _ scoot over _ , and climb under the table next to him, until they’re pressed up against each other from shoulder to legs. It’s uncomfortable, because neither him nor Bokuto are small people by any measure, but as long as Bokuto doesn’t move from here, Akaashi knows he won’t, either.

It would be different if this were happening in the middle of a match. During a game, Akaashi trusts Bokuto to have the presence of mind to be able to calm himself down, and trusts the rest of the team enough for them to back up their ace and keep him in top shape. He would just tell Bokuto he wouldn’t set for him until he pulled himself together, and the whole ordeal would take maybe two minutes tops.

But outside a game it’s not like that. It’s fragile. Though Akaashi knows that logically, he spends most of his life outside matches than he’ll ever spend in one, a lot of it centers around gyms and courts and volleyballs and drills. It centers around his team, and Bokuto.

(Bokuto’s such a big part of his life it’s almost embarrassing.)

Akaashi doesn’t know what started this, and he knows Bokuto won’t tell. They couldn’t be more different, when it comes down to it — while Akaashi will never utter a word he doesn’t mean, Bokuto can talk your ears off without saying anything. So he just stays. Bokuto’s noticed he’s here, because he leaned a little bit of his body weight against him when Akaashi sat down, but other than that, he hasn’t made a sound. Akaashi can barely even hear him breathe.

The afternoon sun is dawning from the high up windows of the gym, coloring the entire court with an orange tint. It’s quiet but for the sounds of their living, and the squeak of their shoes as they adjust their positions, and the twittering of birds outside. It’s almost picture perfect, in a way. He’s sitting next to a beautiful boy, or so the poem goes. Akaashi doesn’t let himself get far enough into it.

Sometimes, his head betrays him. 

He has a penchant for thinking a million words and then only saying half of what he means. So in his head, he goes,  _ I thought Bokuto was the sun but turns out he’s only human, _ and,  _ After today I don’t think I’ll ever be able to peel an orange and not think of this moment _ , and _ he’s sitting next to a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he…  _

Out loud, Akaashi says, “That’s weird.”

Bokuto startles, hitting his head against the underside of the table and then whining pitifully, clutching at it. “Holy  _ fuck _ , Akaash,” he says, and his voice sounds rough. He won’t meet Akaashi’s eye. “What did you say?”

Akaashi can feel his neck heating up, and prickles of sweat pop up all over his skin. He’s usually so,  _ so  _ good at swallowing what he wants to say. But now he definitely said  _ something _ , and there’s no explaining it away besides lying. Of all the things Akaashi wants to do, lying to Bokuto is not one of them.

“I,” he says, very eloquently. “Um. I was. Thinking out loud?”

Bokuto turns to look at him, which means their faces are very close, because neither of them have moved from under that damned table. His eyes look a little red, but dry, so Akaashi at least doesn’t also have to freak out about someone crying. “You know,” Bokuto says, and there’s a smile in his voice this time, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you stammer before.”

Akaashi shrugs, or moves his shoulders as much as he can in such a cramped space. “Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologize,” Bokuto rushes to say, flapping his hands. “It’s okay. It’s — everyone does that. It’s cute.”

Akaashi doesn’t know who flushes brighter, but he’s the one able to keep a straight enough face to raise an eyebrow at Bokuto, who by the mortified expression he’s wearing, did  _ not  _ mean to say that out loud. And oh,  _ my _ , aren’t they just doing great today?

He lets it slide, because he’s not a complete asshole, and turns around to face the court. “So,” he says, conversationally, “since you think I’m cute and all, will you tell me what’s wrong?”

Okay, maybe he’s a little bit of an asshole. But hearing Bokuto splutter like this never loses its appeal. 

Bokuto hesitates. And hesitates, and hesitates for so long that Akaashi starts to think he won’t answer at all. Then, in the smallest voice he’s ever heard come from him, Bokuto says, “I feel like everything’s going around just. A little too fast. And fast is good! It keeps you moving. But sometimes you’re keeping up with the pace and then you stumble once, and when you stumble once you stumble twice, and I keep thinking I’m gonna stumble a third time and I. Don’t know. What to do about it.”

Akaashi looks askance at him. He’s curled back up into the position he’d found him in, though he’s not quite hiding his face. Akaashi pulls his legs closer to his chest. “This is about the practice match with Itachiyama?”

A wince. Hit the nail on the head.

It had been — a rough game, for lack of a better word. They won, but they made mistakes, and for people like Bokuto, the two things are mutually exclusive. Akaashi can keep going from game to game with a mostly cool head, and so can Haruki and Konoha and the other third years. And though Bokuto doesn’t wallow, he sulks. He’s a lot of things, but self-pitying isn’t one of them. He’s  _ frustrated _ .

Akaashi nudges Bokuto’s foot with his own. “You won’t know if you’ll stumble until you take another step, Bokuto-san,” he says, and though his voice is low, it echoes a little on the empty court. “No one lives on maybes. The world only spins forward.”

Bokuto snorts, but it sounds self-deprecating. “The world spins, spins, spins,” he sighs, tipping his head back against the wall as much as he can. “And what do we do?”

Akaashi frowns a little, because isn’t it obvious?

“What do you think?” he says. “We hold on.”

Akaashi doesn’t really know how to explain the way Bokuto looks at him. The only way he can come close is that it looks like thirst. 

They stare at each other until the light shifts and the sun hits the back of Akaashi’s head, making Bokuto close his eyes at the sudden brightness. Akaashi’s head twitches a little, like shaking cobwebs, and he feels a little dazed. He opens his mouth, and closes it again.

Bokuto asks, very quietly, “What is it, Akaashi-kun?”

(And what else can he do?)

“You remind me of the world,” Akaashi says, slowly. “In that way.” Bokuto’s face looks flushed, though that might just be the sun. Akaashi makes himself keep speaking, squeezing his eyes tightly and clenching his fists at his sides. “Because,” his voice sounds rough, so he clears his throat a little and continues, “because. The world only spins forward, Bokuto-san. And no matter how far you go, that’s the only way you look.”

The silence that follows reminds Akaashi of summer days. It tastes like sugary orange juice, and he can almost feel the sugar between his fingers. They twitch.

(A sentence that will follow Akaashi for years:

“You can say whatever you like, Akaash. But I think you’re plenty good with words.”)

**iv.**

“Do you want me to toss for you?”

Bokuto blinks. “Did I accidentally slip into an alternate dimension?” He raises his head from his stretching position, scrunching his nose. “Usually it’s  _ me  _ asking  _ you _ .”

Akaashi grips the ball tighter between his hands, nails worrying at the rough surface of it. He looks at Bokuto in a way that says _ don’t be difficult _ , but doesn’t say anything else.

He doesn’t consider himself someone who’s easily shaken. He’s able to make it through most games while keeping a straight face and a cool head; he thinks ahead and calls the shot when need be, despite being the only second year on the team (which is isolating, but not as much as it would be expected), and he’s conditioned his teammates to have a nearly pavlovian response when he looks at them just the right way, which makes them all scramble to do as he says. That’s not to say he’s bossy or arrogant: he’s  _ trustworthy _ , and in Fukuroudani, his word holds a lot of weight. The most reliable thing about Akaashi is just how reliable he is. 

His skin feels scrubbed raw. 

“You don’t have to,” he says, when Bokuto still doesn’t answer. He spins the ball between his palms, once and twice. “Practice is over. We should get going home, anyway.”

“No, no!” Bokuto exclaims, waving his hands wildly. He jumps up from where he’d been stretching on the gym floor, shaking his head as if he’d drifted. “Of course! I would love to. It’s just — I don’t think you’ve ever asked me if you could toss before. Usually you just complain about how much I want to spike before, because when you get tired I still want to keep going.” He tilts his head a little, very wide eyes looking at Akaashi. “Are you alright?”

Akaashi, who is most definitely  _ not  _ alright, says, “I’m always alright,” and starts walking towards the upper left corner of the gym, which is his and Bokuto’s usual practice spot. 

It’s stupid, anyway, and he doesn’t think it would be any useful to even say anything about it. He’s seventeen and had a fight with his mother; big fucking deal. 

It’s just that Akaashi had never heard her scream before. He didn’t know how shrill her voice got, or how anger made her face and fists flush, and she yelled at him and at the sky and at the phone and she wouldn’t shut  _ up _ . He’s still not sure what the fight was about, whether it was about nothing in particular or about  _ everything _ , about seventeen years of silence and awkward pauses and hesitation. He’d gotten home late for the third night in a row after practice, because a few guys from the team had decided to go out for ice cream straight afterwards, and she’d just been sitting at the kitchen table clutching a steaming cup of tea, as if his life were some god-awful coming of age movie. 

Akaashi had taken off his shoes and nodded at her in hello, and was halfway to his room when she’d said, “Why don’t we talk, Keiji?”

One step back, in which Akaashi had really considered just not stopping, because his entire body felt like a string ready to snap and all he could think, with much more tiredness than he’d thought possible, was,  _ Really? We’re doing this now? _

Out loud, he’d answered, “We’re talking right now.”

He doesn’t want to think about it. Her face crumpled up and turned ugly, like she was holding back tears, and her sentences that sometimes turned into questions were just garbled and hiccuped words of  _ That’s not what I mean, you know that’s not what I mean, stop being so difficult, _ and his mother tugged at her own hair with a distraught look on her face and she squeezed her eyes shut and cried with no tears, shoulders hunched over her tea. 

(What is a son supposed to feel in moments like that? What is he supposed to do?

Unlike feelings, blood gets realer when you feel it. 

He’s cold all over, and his ears are rushing.)

But he’s too good at staying still, and he’s played a hundred matches in learning how to keep a straight face, so his mouth didn’t even twitch. “You can love someone and not talk to them all the time,” he’d said, flatly. “It’s not like it matters.”

He wasn’t really talking about his mother. 

She’d flinched, a full body thing, like a terrified child. Then she rose to her full height, which was just past Akaashi’s shoulder, and jabbed a finger in his chest, her voice ringing, “You think I don’t care, do you ? You have no idea. You have no idea. I care. I care so much I’m  _ sick _ .”

And she’d kept pressing her hand weekly against him, like she couldn’t quite make herself push him away, muttering  _ I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m sick, _ until Akaashi held her wrist, as gently as he could, and lowered it. Then he walked away, and into his room.

“Akaash,” Bokuto is saying. “Akaash, Akaashi, you’re crying.”

Of course he is.  _ Of course he is. _ Akaashi presses a fist against his stinging eyes, thanking all gods that he’s not a noisy crier. His other hand is still gripping tightly at the ball he never even got to set, and he does his best to not think about how Bokuto is watching him.

He doesn’t bother saying that he isn’t crying, because that would be useless, so he just squeezes his eyes shut and breathes, sliding the ball under his arm so he can use his hands to rub his face. His fingers tug at his hair as he does so, accidentally, and then he remembers how his mother does the same thing when she cries, and he didn’t use to  _ know  _ that, and. 

Bokuto’s hands grasp at his, unknotting his fingers from his scalp. Akaashi can’t make himself look up to meet his eye, but he can imagine what he’ll find there. That careful, gentle expression, the one he wore that one time when they found an abandoned litter of kittens just at the corner of Bokuto’s house, or when one of the first year setters started crying during practice after failing an exam. Bokuto is good with people in all the places Akaashi is not, and under that gaze, Akaashi can’t help but feel a little bit ashamed. 

(Okay, Bokuto isn’t the most recommended person to deal with a crying person. The last time he had to cheer someone up was Kuroo, during one of their joint training camps with Nekoma, who’d gotten frustrated after losing a practice match and lashed out at Kenma, so they were both sulking on opposite sides of the court. All Bokuto really had to do was punch him in the arm and ask if he wanted to practice some blocks, which worked. Then Kuroo apologized, and Kenma told him he wasn’t mad because he _knew_ , and Akaashi had to drag Bokuto away from what seemed to be a private moment. But still.) 

Akaashi opens his mouth to say something, but Bokuto beats him to it, tugging at the hands he’s still holding. “Don’t say it’s nothing, Akaashi,” he says. “You don’t have to tell me what it is, but it’s obviously something, so you don’t have to say it’s  _ nothing _ . I know you were going to.”

Akaashi, more than ever, does not know what to say to that. After a few moments of trying and failing to make his mouth work, he lets out a small, “So. It’s something.”

Bokuto cackles unexpectedly, and it’s enough to make Akaashi look up at him. And he wasn’t half wrong; he is wearing that gentle expression in his face, but he doesn’t look like he’s talking to a spooked animal. He’s holding Akaashi’s hands in his, not like he’s expecting Akaashi to bolt, but just because. 

He’s not talking to a spooked animal. He’s talking to Akaashi. Akaashi who, irrevocably, continues to be Akaashi, regardless of whether he’s crying or not.

“Okay, then,” Bokuto says, quietly, which for him is just normal volume. “You good?”

Akaashi nods. “I don’t know what to say,” he also says, because that seems appropriate. He and Bokuto are still holding hands, and that’s making his mind and stomach do funny things. 

Bokuto smiles, eyes bright. “Now, who would’ve thought,” he says, teasing, “the great talker, Akaashi, would have nothing to say?”

Akaashi shrugs, a little awkwardly. “I’m a quiet guy,” he says. “That’s my shtick.”

Bokuto tilts his head, hair still mussed with dried-up sweat from regular practice, which makes him look like a spooked owl. “No one is only one thing,” he says. Then he turns back to the court, pumping one fist in the air as he spins the ball he’d taken from Akaashi (when did  _ that  _ happen?), and exclaims, “Come on, Akaashi-kun! Give me a hundred tosses!”

In spite of himself, Akaashi smiles. Just a twitch. 

He falls into the familiar steps of setting for Bokuto. Calculating the exact amount of time he has to toss between touching the ball and the spiker’s run up has always been weirdly soothing for him, in a way, and he cherishes Bokuto’s predictable shouts of  _ hey, hey, hey! _ whenever he hits the ball with a particularly loud  _ bang _ . The squeaking of shoes against the gym floor is something Akaashi hears even in his sleep, the noise as expected at this point as the sound of his own thoughts, and he lets himself get lost in it. Watch, set,  _ bang _ . The afternoon sun colors the day around them, watery and weak as it is in winter, but warm all the same. 

They’re taking a five minute break to catch their breath and drink some water, when Bokuto asks him suddenly, “Hey, Akaash, why do you play volleyball?”

Akaashi tilts his head at him, downing the rest of his bottle. “Because I’m good at it,” he answers. 

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Bokuto says. “Of course you’re good. But would you still be playing if you weren’t good at it? Would you keep playing just because you like it?”

He sets his bottle down, moving to stretch one of his legs. “I didn’t start out amazing,” Akaashi says, considering. “So I did have to work a little to get where I am today. But I guess I never thought of it that way. I just kept playing because I was good at it, and because it was fun.”

“Aw, you think volleyball’s  _ fun? _ ” Bokuto says, cooing exaggeratedly. “That’s high praise from you.”

Akaashi rolls his eyes, and Bokuto laughs, laying with his back down on the floor. “I love volleyball,” Bokuto says, unprompted, after a few minutes. “I know it sounds cheesy to say that, but I really, really do. I like having people to cheer me on, and an audience, but I would keep playing even without that, you know. I don’t know what about it makes me so,” he makes a grasping gesture with his hand, right where the sunlight streams through the window and hits the floor. “It makes me feel way bigger than I actually am. I think that’s it. And it’s kind of stupid, because it’s a very simple game when you strip away all the things that make it special to us, isn’t it, Akaashi? Two teams. One net. One ball. Us against them.”

“When you put it like  _ that _ ,” Akaashi acquiesces, when it seems Bokuto is done talking. “But of course you’d be the one to say it like there aren’t over fifty-six different variations on the basic rules of volleyball.”

“And I bet you can quote them all  _ verbatim _ , right?” Bokuto says, smiling. Then he scrunches his nose. “Did I use that word right?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Ah. Anyways, I can stop talking about all that now. Do you want to keep going?”

Akaashi checks the time on his phone, and guesses that he still has about an hour to get home before his mother does — he’s not going to think about that now. “For just a little longer,” he says, and Bokuto is jumping up before he’s even done speaking.

“Hey, hey, hey, that’s what I like to hear!” He grabs one of the stray balls next to his feet. Despite the fact that they’ve been practicing for hours, if it weren’t for the sweat drenching the back of his shirt, Bokuto wouldn’t even look winded.

They get into position. Before Bokuto can throw the ball for him to set, Akaashi hears himself asking, “How much does it take to play volleyball like you do, Bokuto?”

“Ah, nothing much,” Bokuto says, breezily. Then he grins at Akaashi, all teeth and Fukuroudani’s ace. “Just everything. Absolutely everything.”

He sets. Bokuto spikes. Akaashi thinks,  _ oh. _

**v.**

When you strip down all the things that make it special, volleyball is very simple. 

People are not. But once upon a time Akaashi thought to himself that loving other people is the easiest thing in the entire world, and as he sits besides Bokuto after the graduation ceremony, he doesn’t think he’s been wrong in thinking that.

Akaashi is going to be a third year student by summer’s end. He’s captain now, and still the team’s starting setter. Bokuto is going pro, having already signed a contract with the MBSY Black Jackals, which is a surprise to absolutely no one, other than Bokuto himself. Figures that with all the times he’d waxed poetic about playing volleyball until he died, he wouldn’t make the connection that with scouts at every game at Nationals, he could make a living out of it. 

On one hand, Akaashi is not going pro. He might still have one year ahead in front of him, and another go at Nationals, but he’s had his mind made up since middle school. No matter how often words have failed him — he doesn’t see any other future. And playing has always been fun, but it was never his dream.

Bokuto, on the other hand.

They’re sitting on the steps of a gazebo, in a park just a few blocks from Akaashi’s place. Bokuto is eating a popsicle, and Akaashi is twirling the cold can of iced tea between his hands, unopened. It’s a sunny day, though not overly hot, and a light breeze makes its way through the grass and ruffles their hair; on the distance, birds twitter. Between them sits Bokuto’s diploma, encased in its shiny black cloth and completely unavoidable.

Akaashi isn’t exactly sad that Bokuto’s graduating, because he’s always known, ever since they met, that he would be spending his third year of high school alone. And just because they won’t be going to school together anymore, doesn’t mean that they won’t see each other — Kenma and Kuroo being the perfect example of that, even though it barely counts because they’re still neighbors — , but it’s still weird to think about. It’s weird to picture a court without Bokuto in it.

Bokuto’s foot nudges his own, and Akaashi nudges back.

And there it is. He’s sitting next to a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell him that he loves him, but he loves him.

The original poem says  _ you. _ Akaashi doesn’t want to be presumptuous enough to assume that the same could be applied here, and yet. 

Yet, Bokuto says, “I’m going to miss you a lot.”

Akaashi half smiles. “I’m hardly going to die,” he says. “We’ll both still be around.”

But Bokuto doesn’t smile back. He looks nervous, and then he sighs and rubs his hands together, shutting his eyes tightly. Akaashi is immediately on high alert, straightening up.

“I’m going to say this because,” Bokuto says, voice slightly high pitched, “because I don’t want to graduate without saying it, and because Hinata has told me to go for it multiple times, but I always chickened out, and because Kuroo says I need to stop being  _ dumb  _ because you obviously think the same, but.”

It all comes out in a rush, and Akaashi can only blink. Then he blinks again, and it dawns on him, and the way his face immediately reddens and yet turns completely flat is just a façade, because inside his head there are a tiny million Akaashi’s blaring a red signal that says  _ holy fuck. _

Bokuto says, “I really, really like you, Akaashi.”

Akaashi sets his can down, presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, and groans.

“Uh,” he hears Bokuto say. “Is that — I’m sorry ?”

“Don’t apologize,” Akaashi mumbles, feeling incredibly, incredibly stupid. “I should apologize beforehand, because I’ll probably end up saying something stupid.”

Bokuto pries his arms away from his face, and Akaashi looks at him from between his lashes. “Hey,” Bokuto says. “You never say stupid things.”

“That’s  _ because _ ,” Akaashi’s voice breaks, and he winces. His heart is beating on his fingertips, so fast he thinks he might pass out, and his mouth feels full of cotton. “It’s because I’m not good with them. If you say the wrong thing you always mess everything up, and I. I can’t do that. I have to think before I speak but then I think too much and don’t speak enough. And everyone thinks it’s because I’m intelligent, and thoughtful, but it’s just because I’m scared. I’m so  _ scared. _ ”

“Akaash,” Bokuto says, sounding winded. “Why are you scared?”

“Because I want to say so many things to you all the time,” Akaashi says, “And it’s been two years and I haven’t even said half of them. And they’re all so jumbled up in my head I don’t know if I can anymore.”

Bokuto looks confused for a moment, then thoughtful, and then something dawns on his face, and his eyes widen. “Oh,” he whispers. “Oh, Akaashi, is this because you  _ like  _ me?”

“Because I like you,” Akaashi echoes, because if he just repeats it it’s not as bad, and because he’s afraid to say the stronger word. He moves to tug his hair and hide his face again, but Bokuto’s still holding on to his wrists, the skin calloused and warm against his own. 

“You never said,” Bokuto says, not unkindly. He doesn’t sound mad, or upset; he just sounds like he’s trying to understand. “Two years — that’s ever since we met. You’ve liked me since then?”

And Akaashi just looks at him, because how could he not?

“I wanted to,” he says, quietly. “But I couldn’t say it out loud. I was afraid I’d ruin everything. And now — gods, I don’t know. If you like me too, for whatever reason. I don’t know.”

“How could I not like you?” Bokuto asks.

And Akaashi laughs. Quietly at first, and then growing until his shoulders are shaking and he’s gasping for breath, holding Bokuto’s hands between his own. And he hears Bokuto start to laugh too, and they’re leaning against each other under the setting sun in the middle of an empty park, giggling like two little kids with a secret. 

When it’s over, Akaashi feels — weird. In a good way. His eyes are wet and his chest is light, though his ribs are tough from laughing so much. Bokuto tilts his head back, looking at the sky, but doesn’t move away even an inch. They’re silent together, for a moment or a hundred, just holding each other and breathing before the world keeps spinning. 

Akaashi’s life doesn’t start with Bokuto, and it doesn’t end with him either. He’s a lot of things besides Bokuto’s best friend, and Fukuroudani’s setter, and even his mother’s son, because no one is only one thing. But in this pocket of time, in this in between, Akaashi can pretend there’s nothing more.

He says, “I’m not good with words,” and he says, “I don’t need them to always say what I mean.”

And Bokuto answers, “But you can have them. For the first time, just tell me this out loud. What do you want?”

Akaashi intertwines their fingers tighter, and pulls him closer, so they’re shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee. “This,” he says, simply. “I want this.”

He’s not afraid to say the next word.

**Author's Note:**

> :D so. i hope you guys liked that. i tried to keep both of them as in-character as possible, but tell me what you think!
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are appreciated. if you want to scream at me, you can do that on twitter @bornfrombeauty. see you!


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